Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Review: Caribbean Sense Of Life

Consider the complex conditions under which a Northern family is obliged to live. Think of the labour expended upon that unceasing duel with the elements--the extra clothing and footwear and mufflers and mantles, the carpets, the rugs, the abundant and costly food required to keep the body in sound working condition, the plumbing, the gas, the woodwork, the paintings and repaintings, the tons of fuel, the lighting in winter, the contrivances against frost and rain, the neverending repairs to houses, the daily polishings and dustings and scrubbings and those thousand other impediments to the life of the spirit! Half of them are nonexistent in these latitudes; half the vitality expended on them could be directed to other ends. ...

"Living in our lands, men would have liesure to cultivate nobler aspects of their nature. They would be accessible to purer aspirations, worthier delights. They would enjoy the happiness of sages. What other happiness deserves the name? In the [..Tropics...] lies the hope of humanity."Norman Douglas, SOUTH WIND, Dodd,Mead, NY, 1918; ...............................Douglas’ description of the ordinary homelife of the Anglo-American middle class may no longer be accurate, what servants did in 1918 is now done electrically; but his description of the burdens of the North come crashing down when the electricity fails. In the tropics still, the failure of electricity is an inconvenience, not a disaster.And he is certainly right that the tropics give opportunity to express “the nobler aspects” of our natures. I Rhonda King has collected examples, visual and textual, in “”Caribbean Sense of Life” .

"...this publication advances the ongoing process of education and reflection by moving the discussions from the ivory towers to the coffee tables, kitchen tables and bar counters of ordinary folk. "

Interspersed among the snippets of wisdom are photographs by Fanny Terrer, which are reminiscent of Edward Weston’s technique, but are caribbean in nature.

“It was the first time I had seen indigenous people from the New World. I was as much struck by their appearance as was Christopher Columbus. The first thing I noticed was their serious demeanour, dignified and proud. There was in this respect some likeness to the Spaniards. It was easy to recognise a people never disgraced by slavery, who clearly regarded themselves as anyone’s equal. Their looks were assured, and in them could be read the indomitable courage which had stood the test of more than three centuries."

"…In Europe these individuals would have belonged to a superior class, whereas here this was the common type.”

Alexandre Moreau de Jonnès, Historian, French Caribbean, (1778-1870).....................................The challenge of the Caribbean is that it was colonial. The aboriginal population were largely driven out, the last being the Garifuna that de Jonnes described; and before the market for tropical products collapsed, the idea of the european planters was to make some money and go home......................................The history of the islands can never be satisfactorily told, because history is built around achievement and creation; nothing was created in the West Indies. There were only plantations, prosperity, decline, neglect, the size of the islands called for nothing else.”

V. S. Naipaul, Writer, Nobel Laureate in Literature, Trinidad and Tobago.....................................The caribbean culture is thus primarily black--derived from africans who were raped from their villages, mixed higgledy-piggledy on the transports, and forced to find friends and familly among strangers. ......................................

The philosophers and politicians of the various islands have been trying to figure out how to be Caribbean for a long time: as Dr., the Honourable. Ralph E. Gonsalves, Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines says in his essay “Our Caribbean Civilization”:......................................

I am most pleased to have been asked by CARICOM’s Secretary-General, His Excellency Mr. Edwin Carrington, to deliver the inaugural lecture in the Distinguished Lecture Series to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the founding of CARICOM. I take the Secretary-General’s invitation as a tribute to St. Vincent and the Grenadines, which has been in the vanguard of regionalism since the 1930’s, under a long line of committed regionalists: George Augustus Mc Intosh, Ebenezer Theodore Joshua, Robert Milton Cato and James Fitz-Allen Mitchell. I also take this invitation to address you as a personal honour, a recognition of my many years of unwavering toil in, and for, the regional vineyard.........................................

But the unique quality is still a matter of history.........................................

“The distinguishing characteristic of our Caribbean civilisation: If all other societies had slavery, the slavery in ancient Greece or ancient Rome, on ancient Babylon, or modern America was of a minority. The Caribbean is the only place in the history of the world, where the overwhelming majority of the population were slaves or indentured labourers.

Freedom in the Caribbean automatically posed the question of mass rule. That is why we are the world’s most rebellious people. I did not say the world’s most revolutionary people.”Leonard Tim Hector,Political Activist, Antigua

A Vision for the Twenty-first Century

We envision the day when all Caribbean people within the Caribbean and throughout the Diaspora will be fully conscious of the uniqueness and the potency of the Caribbean Sense of Life.

Awareness will facilitate the charting of a new path thus creating an integrated approach to regional development.

The Caribbean is the new frontier for creating and hosting the ultimate mode of being – an eco-friendly consciousness pursuing the natural balance between being and doing.

It is the locale for facilitating a meaningful and fully integrated lifestyle.

And with those words Rhonda King articulates the significance of her book: it illustrates how the Caribbean past and present point to the future. A copy belongs on every coffee table. And for those who can’t afford a coffee table, a paperback version will be coming out in the near future.